why is pingmute considered a solution to pingspam, but chatmute isnt for flame?

Arammus·Mar 18, 2018·3 votes·308 views

a few days ago i asked why pingspam is not a reportable thing. and the main answers/the answers with the most upvotes were "because we have pingmute feature". now dont get me wrong, i do pingmute ppl. and i also mute flamers.

but please someone explain to me. by that logic, just mute what bothers you, how is it not allowed to flame someone? we have chatmute feature.

im just trying to understand the logic of the board community here

6 Comments

ChermorgMar 19, 20184 votes

Put simply, chat is open. You can say whatever you want. If someone wants to tell me I am a "fucking asshole and shit at the game and you need to uninstall", they can. That's simply the definition of chat.

Pings are extremely limited. There's a dot, an exclamation point, a question mark, and a "I'm coming" symbol. All of those have very legitimate uses in game. If someone happens to use it 6 times and gets limited, it's not inherently toxic. If someone is tilted by someone using pings, there's really not any good reason to punish someone for pinging... it's just like emotes. It's extremely obvious when someone is flaming or being toxic in chat. Spamming a ping 6 times is hardly obviously toxic. It's not like chat where someone can say very toxic things if they want - they're limited to the few symbols they have to use, and if they somehow are able to tilt you by using those symbols... I'm not sure what to say.

There is a line that must be drawn between "allowable game mechanic" and "something that we can punish for". If you start punishing someone for "ping spam" (which isn't really spam, as you're rate limited to 6), where do you draw the line?

I do respect that people have different opinions than me on this - some people feel that ping spam is legitimate abuse that should be punished. It is not, however, anywhere near the same as chat which can be heavily, continuously, and specifically abused.

The other thing to consider is that if they don't want to chat, they don't have to. If you remove someone's ability to ping, you are effectively removing the easiest, fastest, and most utilized form of communication from their game.

Fuch This GameMar 19, 20181 votes

The issue is that Pings use to not be a thing yet the problem remained where you are banned for saying things in chat while you can just mute what bothers you. So whats Riots reasoning before the game even had a ping option? Pretty sure they just enjoy the fact people cant express problems with teams over chat, They would rather live in the fantasy that everyone in this game is an angel that does no wrong and bans them for ever speaking their opinions. Muting someone on chat easily solves the issue but people would rather pretend they are severely scarred over a comment someone made about them. Cant mute inters and trolls, but by all means, ban those who say "Can you stop being a fucking asshole for 10 minutes".

zPOOPzMar 19, 20182 votes

When was ping not a thing? I've played since Season 3 and there was ping. Granted were only a G key normal ping and a V key danger ping.

Baka RedMar 19, 20181 votes

Imo the OP is correct; ping spam should be punishable by the IFS just like flaming in chat. However, there are some realities with which we must like with that make punishing ping spam practically impossible.

You say a lot of things about pings being limited and all, but like it or not, people are harassing each other with "enemy missing" ping. Yes, officially it says "enemy missing", but unofficially it usually means something like "You are an idiot!" After all, the enemy is usually dancing on the corpse of that poor guy, who is now receiving the ping spam and thus the enemy is hardly missing. If you say that isn't harassment, you are quite wrong, to put it politely - someone might even give you some "enemy missing" pings if you do. ;) I won't though; I despise that behavior.

Also, you say that it is limited to six pings (with it's easy to spam negative message). It isn't. After the six "?", you get a brief pause before you get the "?" spam again. The harassers often spam it as much as they can for any mistake they perceive (imagined or not) and often that continues until the end of the match even if there are no mistakes involved anymore. The end result is much more than the six "?" pings with it's unofficial message. From replays I have seen some teams clearly disintegrate themselves ("get tilted") when two or more of them start ping spam harassing each other. Those replays are sad things to see. Personally I do get slightly annoyed if someone ping spams me, but pingmute is my only response with a harassment report if I still remember it in the post-game lobby.

Pings are clearly used for harassment and that is the undeniable truth. IFS should be able to detect and punish for it, but it isn't. That is the unfortunate truth that pairs with the undeniable one. The reason ping spam isn't punishable is, that it is much harder for IFS to analyze ping spam than chat. Most likely Riot has not been able to code a reliable detection system for that, and I can understand (and live) with that thanks to the pingmute. That doesn't change the truth that ping spam should be punishable - we just cannot have that as reality, since pingspam reports would have to be judged manually and there is no way for Riot can hire that many 'judges' to analyze all those reports. That is the practical truth.